Context: Global timeshare vacation ownership booking platform
Role: Principal Product Designer
Timeline: Apr 2023 – Jul 2025
Hilton Grand Vacations
Redesigning Hilton’s booking platform to streamline reservations, unify legacy systems, and make vacation planning easier for owners.
Hilton Grand Vacations’ booking platform had grown fragmented over years of legacy systems and acquisitions, leading to inconsistent flows, outdated patterns, and no mobile support. Owners were navigating complex reservation logic, unclear points information, and an experience that no longer matched Hilton’s modern digital standards.
Members struggled to compare availability, understand ownership rules, manage points, and complete reservations—especially across different account types. My goal was to unify the experience, modernize the visual system, and create a flexible, cross-platform design foundation that made booking faster, clearer, and more intuitive for every owner.
Left Side - Legacy Site
Right Side - New Site
01
Understanding the Current System
Platform Audit
Hilton Grand Vacations’ booking system had grown fragmented after years of acquisitions and legacy tools. Owners were dealing with inconsistent flows, outdated patterns, and no mobile support — all of which made planning a vacation harder than it needed to be.
Fragmented Logic — Ownership rules and inventory views varied across 40+ account types.
Aging CMS — Outdated templates made updates slow and non-scalable.
Points Confusion — Usage and carryover rules weren’t clear, leading to constant support calls.
No Mobile or Accessibility Support — The experience wasn’t responsive and didn’t meet WCAG standards.
Brand Inconsistency — The UI didn’t match modern Hilton digital patterns.
02
Where Owners Struggled
Key Friction Points
Research and interviews surfaced clear patterns in where members were getting stuck. Many of the challenges stemmed from inconsistent logic, hidden information, and overly complex flows carried over from acquisitions.
Hard-to-Follow Booking Flows — Reservation steps varied wildly across ownership types, creating confusion and drop-offs.
Unclear Points Information — Balances, usage, and conversions were hard to find or interpret.
Cluttered Interfaces — Dense layouts made it difficult to scan availability, compare options, or complete tasks quickly.
Inconsistent Access Rules — Different user tiers surfaced different features without clear guardrails.
High Support Volume — Most inquiries boiled down to unclear UI patterns, not system errors.
03
Designing a Clearer, More Modern Experience
Simplifying the Core Tasks
The goal wasn’t just to refresh the UI — it was to make a complex ownership ecosystem feel approachable, familiar, and easy to navigate across desktop and mobile.
What I Focused On
Modernizing the Visual System — Introduced a clean, tile-based layout inspired by Hilton’s broader digital identity.
Reducing Cognitive Load — Broke dense information into smaller, digestible modules that were easier for older users to scan.
Clarifying Points & Ownership — Surfaced yearly totals, added sorting tools, and made usage/exchange actions more prominent.
Leaning Into Familiar Patterns — Mirrored Hilton.com behaviors so owners felt immediately oriented, not relearning from scratch.
Designing for Flexibility — Built a modular system that could scale across 50K+ resort pages, multiple ownership types, and future acquisitions.
I built Hilton Grand Vacations’ first 0–1 design system — a unified, responsive framework adopted across 8+ web and mobile products. I defined scalable components, accessibility standards, and cross-platform patterns that aligned engineering, product, and brand under a single design language for the first time.
Sample of the system shown below.
The mobile experience starts by highlighting resorts and destinations, designed to mirror the familiar look and feel of Hilton.com. I used generous spacing around imagery and text to create a warm, inviting atmosphere that feels consistent with Hilton’s brand while tailored to timeshare owners.
Personalization was a key pillar of the redesign. The mobile dashboard leverages machine learning to adapt to each user’s needs, using modular tiles and tailored browsing options to surface the most relevant content and actions.
04
Results & Impact
A Unified, Scalable Booking Platform
The redesigned experience replaced fragmented flows with a consistent, intuitive booking journey across ownership types and devices.
Improvements Delivered
Higher Booking Completion — Streamlined reservation paths and clearer navigation reduced friction across devices.
Lower Support Volume — surfacing points, ownership actions, and resort details cut down on common call drivers.
WCAG-Compliant System — Accessibility upgrades reduced legal risk and opened the platform to a broader audience.
Unified Design Ecosystem — Consolidated 40+ ownership models under a cohesive, permission-aware design system.
Cross-Platform Consistency — Built Hilton’s first responsive design framework supporting 8+ digital products.